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> Most everyone else tried to find a use for Twitter but couldn’t. I know many early users that either abandoned or deleted their accounts before 2010. So what

> Most everyone else tried to find a use for Twitter but couldn’t. I know many early users that either abandoned or deleted their accounts before 2010. So what changed? Why did twitter eventually become so popular?

rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, define ‘so popular’. It has never been in the top tier of social networks, usage-wise; it’s generally been an order of magnitude off Facebook.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  "Popular" isn't quite the right word—"significant" might be a bit closer? In my country, at least, Twitter was adopted by the political, celebrity, and media class far more than Facebook ever was.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  If Facebook is the minimum for top-tier then there is only one top-tier social network. Being an order of magnitude off Facebook still makes the network one of the most popular social networks of all time.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    The top tier is, essentially, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and TikTok. These are used by literally billions of people; with the exception of China, virtually everyone on earth is exposed to them fairly directly. (Also Telegram and WhatsApp are a borderline case; they have the users, and they have social-network-like features, but most of the users are likely not _using_ the social-network-like features; they just use them as messaging apps). The second tier is things like Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, Quora; these are in the 300-600 million user range, so they're big, but you don't have the same sort of universal exposure.
    - spunker540 2y ago
      Is HN third tier?
      - zrail 2y ago
        HN isn't even in the conversation.
    - badgersnake 2y ago
      WeChat also has billions of people.
    - chrisco255 2y ago
      It's a stretch to call YouTube a social network along with the messaging apps. Facebook & Instagram are two products by the same company where social identity is literally shared across them. If your top tier is Meta + Chinese apps then we're just going to have to disagree.
austin-cheney 2y ago
It was cheaper for mainstream media to write a tweet than issue a traditional press statement. But, that’s it.
- theGnuMe 2y ago
  Least ye forget Trumpy Trump!
chrisco255 2y ago
Twitter was almost immediately popular and it stayed popular, it's a revision of history to claim that it wasn't or that most people abandoned it in 2010. Twitter famously had scaling issues that resulted from demand for its use, and when the server was overloaded, they would print an image of a whale being carried by birds, the infamous "Twitter fail whale" (https://business.time.com/2013/11/06/how-twitter-slayed-the-fail-whale/ https://business.time.com/2013/11/06/how-twitter-slayed-the-...). You can see in the article above that even in 2013 they were talking about Twitter's rise to prominence beginning in 2008. Twitter was/is a fantastic resource for one-to-many social media communication. Celebrities flocked to it. Media publications analyzed it and ran stories on the platform. The API used to be quite open and basically free so it plugged into countless apps and was often used in hackathon projects. Hash tags became signal for trending topics. Even the public '@' tag (don't 'at' me bro) basically came from Twitter (or was at least, popularized by it). It was a phenomenon. Reaching 10% of Facebook's reach is hardly anything to scoff at (who had hit 1 billion users around the same time), and dwarfed the population of nearly every nation on earth. Twitter had outsized influence on the public conversation because you could get a message out to millions from a single account, which wasn't possible with Facebook due to friend requests (at the time, Facebook was more purely a friend-to-friend network and pretty sure you were restricted to at most 5K friends). Twitter didn't even require a login to view Tweets. Embedded views in other apps helped to cement its virality.
- wink 2y ago
  There's "popular", then there's "every conference talk has @name in it instead of an email" and then there's "heads of state publish stuff there first instead of POSSE". I'm not saying it wasn't popular, but it was not ubiquitous.
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    It had 100M plus daily active users (and 400M unique hits) even in 2011: https://searchengineland.com/twitter-hits-100-million-active-users-92243 https://searchengineland.com/twitter-hits-100-million-active... It was not as ubiquitous as Facebook, but it was certainly more ubiquitous than RSS by a long shot.
thom 2y ago
Hashtags became links around 2009, but I think it was just critical mass. Instead of yelling into the void, it became very easy to stumble upon a community or discussion around a hobby or event, and follows didn’t require approval like friending on Facebook. Because Twitter lacked structure, you didn’t have to find the right place to be or the right people to speak to, you’d just overlap due to retweets and hashtags. So it inverted in some ways the traditional structure of social networks, allowing for emergent and ephemeral events and places (and thereby main characters) to bubble up and recede. You could be part of something without ever having to be admitted. This was somewhat true of the blogosphere but the currency of trackbacks and comments there wasn’t quite as freewheeling and expansive.
chvid 2y ago
It got to a critical mass for political banter and quick news. Became the go to place for that and probably still is.
- hajhatten 2y ago
  Twitter reached critical mass way before politics infected every post
barrenko 2y ago
I think it's pretty simple, the world just evolved from the overly complicated tags and tagging in general.
sim7c00 2y ago
i think it got popular by people who noticed they can earn a lot of money by tricking others they have interesting things to say. (advertisement via influencers / trends / bots etc.). making it more popular would increase $$ on these things. i wasn't in the super earlybirds users, but this is what i get from having used it. like any other social media really. trick people that its cool somehow and start shoving crap down all their senses you can reach. platforms which don't do this, dont get big because they are kept small. (maybe a bit cynical post, but i don't think its wrong.)

rsynnott 2y ago

I mean, define ‘so popular’. It has never been in the top tier of social networks, usage-wise; it’s generally been an order of magnitude off Facebook.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
"Popular" isn't quite the right word—"significant" might be a bit closer? In my country, at least, Twitter was adopted by the political, celebrity, and media class far more than Facebook ever was.
chrisco255 2y ago
If Facebook is the minimum for top-tier then there is only one top-tier social network. Being an order of magnitude off Facebook still makes the network one of the most popular social networks of all time.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  The top tier is, essentially, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and TikTok. These are used by literally billions of people; with the exception of China, virtually everyone on earth is exposed to them fairly directly. (Also Telegram and WhatsApp are a borderline case; they have the users, and they have social-network-like features, but most of the users are likely not _using_ the social-network-like features; they just use them as messaging apps). The second tier is things like Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, Quora; these are in the 300-600 million user range, so they're big, but you don't have the same sort of universal exposure.
  - spunker540 2y ago
    Is HN third tier?
    - zrail 2y ago
      HN isn't even in the conversation.
  - badgersnake 2y ago
    WeChat also has billions of people.
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    It's a stretch to call YouTube a social network along with the messaging apps. Facebook & Instagram are two products by the same company where social identity is literally shared across them. If your top tier is Meta + Chinese apps then we're just going to have to disagree.

austin-cheney 2y ago

It was cheaper for mainstream media to write a tweet than issue a traditional press statement. But, that’s it.

theGnuMe 2y ago
Least ye forget Trumpy Trump!

chrisco255 2y ago

Twitter was almost immediately popular and it stayed popular, it's a revision of history to claim that it wasn't or that most people abandoned it in 2010. Twitter famously had scaling issues that resulted from demand for its use, and when the server was overloaded, they would print an image of a whale being carried by birds, the infamous "Twitter fail whale" (https://business.time.com/2013/11/06/how-twitter-slayed-the-fail-whale/ https://business.time.com/2013/11/06/how-twitter-slayed-the-...). You can see in the article above that even in 2013 they were talking about Twitter's rise to prominence beginning in 2008. Twitter was/is a fantastic resource for one-to-many social media communication. Celebrities flocked to it. Media publications analyzed it and ran stories on the platform. The API used to be quite open and basically free so it plugged into countless apps and was often used in hackathon projects. Hash tags became signal for trending topics. Even the public '@' tag (don't 'at' me bro) basically came from Twitter (or was at least, popularized by it). It was a phenomenon. Reaching 10% of Facebook's reach is hardly anything to scoff at (who had hit 1 billion users around the same time), and dwarfed the population of nearly every nation on earth. Twitter had outsized influence on the public conversation because you could get a message out to millions from a single account, which wasn't possible with Facebook due to friend requests (at the time, Facebook was more purely a friend-to-friend network and pretty sure you were restricted to at most 5K friends). Twitter didn't even require a login to view Tweets. Embedded views in other apps helped to cement its virality.

wink 2y ago
There's "popular", then there's "every conference talk has @name in it instead of an email" and then there's "heads of state publish stuff there first instead of POSSE". I'm not saying it wasn't popular, but it was not ubiquitous.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  It had 100M plus daily active users (and 400M unique hits) even in 2011: https://searchengineland.com/twitter-hits-100-million-active-users-92243 https://searchengineland.com/twitter-hits-100-million-active... It was not as ubiquitous as Facebook, but it was certainly more ubiquitous than RSS by a long shot.

thom 2y ago

Hashtags became links around 2009, but I think it was just critical mass. Instead of yelling into the void, it became very easy to stumble upon a community or discussion around a hobby or event, and follows didn’t require approval like friending on Facebook. Because Twitter lacked structure, you didn’t have to find the right place to be or the right people to speak to, you’d just overlap due to retweets and hashtags. So it inverted in some ways the traditional structure of social networks, allowing for emergent and ephemeral events and places (and thereby main characters) to bubble up and recede. You could be part of something without ever having to be admitted. This was somewhat true of the blogosphere but the currency of trackbacks and comments there wasn’t quite as freewheeling and expansive.

chvid 2y ago

It got to a critical mass for political banter and quick news. Became the go to place for that and probably still is.

hajhatten 2y ago
Twitter reached critical mass way before politics infected every post

barrenko 2y ago

I think it's pretty simple, the world just evolved from the overly complicated tags and tagging in general.

sim7c00 2y ago

i think it got popular by people who noticed they can earn a lot of money by tricking others they have interesting things to say. (advertisement via influencers / trends / bots etc.). making it more popular would increase $$ on these things. i wasn't in the super earlybirds users, but this is what i get from having used it. like any other social media really. trick people that its cool somehow and start shoving crap down all their senses you can reach. platforms which don't do this, dont get big because they are kept small. (maybe a bit cynical post, but i don't think its wrong.)